Why We Have to Show Our Work by Taylor

Why We Have to Show Our Work by Taylor - July 2016 Scholarship Essay

Images of crowded halls, clumps of friends, and curving lunch lines stand before most who ponder their high school experiences. Some remember the crazy parties, the demanding teachers, or the football scores. The lucky few recall the supportive friends, the confidence-boosting performances, or the sweetest couples. What everyone shares, is a recollection of taking those strenuous and painful classes.
Classes such as these had us questioning our teachers’ intentions. Were they trying to humble us? Did they not understand the depth of our pain? I call them the evil classes because there was not a hint of compassion in their cruel curriculum outlines.
My evil class is known by the name of pre-calculous.
Junior year started out steady but shifted into a rocky decline as I was informed that I would soon be moving. Two and a half months into my school year was just enough time to ensure that I would be moving too early to be allowed exceptions to certain academic requirements, but too late to be able to start on pace with the new school who had begun their courses three weeks prior to myself.
Busy trying to find a niche for myself in a new environment, I also struggled with bio-chemistry and pre-calculous having missed the groundwork in their past lessons. (The class of bio-chemistry was entirely new to me seeing that I was in bio-technology at my previous school and this being its closest match.)
Mr. Kamansky, my math teacher, was very understanding and accommodating with my integration process while other teachers could not find the time to do so with their already overflowing classrooms and schedules. With pre-calculous being my most challenging class, it was odd to me how it could still be enjoyable despite its "evil" nature.
Months passed and I was beginning to feel comfortable. Swim season started and being a part of a team allowed for me to feel at ease with a sense of belonging. Kamansky was also my swim coach and I was able to appreciate his simple words of wisdom (as he was very fond of giving encouragement through ”tough love”).
“Buckle down Fagan, your time needs to be faster.”
“Don’t make me get in there, Sunshine, to show you how it’s done.”
“Knuckles, the five-hundred free event will give you perspective.”
A few of his favorites.
Everyone existed in his world mainly as “sunshine” or “knuckles.” He once shared (to the slacker of the class) that if he wasn’t mad at a procrastinator anymore, it was because he no longer cared about the outcome. It made a person proud if Kamansky offered his tidbits of advice to them.
One fine day, after many attempts to try and memorize the unit circle and various graphs and formulas, the look of despair must have been displayed across the classroom because Kamansky altered the schedule, (which was rarely done), to give us a small pep-talk.
“What most of you don’t know,” he opened, “is that the purpose of this class is not to teach you to memorize formulas and become math experts.”
This was news to me.
He continued, “school is not going to give you all of the information that you need during your life. It will not even approach that extent. What I truly want you all to learn, is how to communicate.”
I mulled it over, questioning his intentions. He furthered his explanation using various examples.
In English classes, we are taught to write essays. It does not matter our opinion or which direction we face, our ability to explain our ideas is what we are graded on.
In history classes, it is expected of us that we will be able to interpret the information before presented and reveal the extent of our knowledge in our essays and notes, not to mention the seemingly endless amounts of quizzes.
With foreign languages the sole purpose of such classes are to learn new forms of words and patterns in order to speak.
In science class, we perform labs followed by the responsibility that the students have to interpret that data and synthesize their information.
But then there was math, and I have to admit, I was stumped until Kamansky offered his opinion on the matter. “Not only does math follow the same pattern, but you’ve heard it your entire math careers. The teachers don’t want the answer to the question, do they? You won’t be graded on the correctness of the answer as long as you don’t show your work. You see, the answer hardly matters anymore when you don’t know how to get it.”
Kamansky’s class was the very first ever that I received less than an A as my final grade. Luckily, it didn’t bother me as much because the purpose of school is not to learn to memorize facts, the purpose is to communicate, to interact, to find our strengths and weaknesses, to prepare for post-high school life.
Thank you Kamansky.